Bergen International Festival

Bergen International Festival; Festspillene i Bergen
	Grieghallen
Status	Active
Genre	Music Festival
Date(s)	May–June
Begins	25 May 2016
Ends	8 June 2016
Frequency	Annually
Location(s)	Bergen
Country	Norway
Years active	1953–
Inaugurated	Founded 1952
Founder	Frank Meidell Falch; Christen Gran Bøgh
Patron(s)	HRH King Harald V of Norway
Website
	www.fib.no/en

Bergen International Festival (Norwegian: Festspillene i Bergen) is an annual international music and cultural festival in Bergen, Norway.^[1]

Biography

The festival is the largest in the Nordic countries in its genre and has a large number of activities in music, dance, literature, visual arts, folklore, etc. The festival is held over fourteen days from the end of May to the start of June and is located in numerous places like the Grieg Hall, Haakon's Hall, Troldhaugen, Lysøen, Siljustøl as well as streets and town squares of Bergen. In the same time span the International Jazz Festival, Nattjazz, takes place in Bergen.^[2]

The first festival that started on 1 June 1953, exactly 55 years after its predecessor and source of inspiration, the first music festival in Norway Edvard Grieg's Bergen Music Festival starting on the 26 June 1898.^[3] The model was the Salzburg Festival, and the initiative came partly from opera singer Fanny Elstad. The original festival director was Frank Meidell Falch from 1951 to 1957.^[4] Christen Gran Bøgh, who died in 1955, also played a major role in the festival's first edition.^[5]

Grieg’s concerto in A minor

Edvard Grieg’s piano concerto in A minor is often called the signature work of the Festival, and has been performed at almost every Festival since 1953. Here are all the soloists: